Editorial

Editorial

Burundi, a small, poor, land-locked nation in the heart of Central Africa, descended into chaos in April 2015, after incumbent President Pierre Nkurunziza launched his bid for a third-term—something the opposition claim is anti-constitutional. Street protests were violently suppressed and since a failed coup in May, a string of grenade attacks and assassinations have gripped the capital.

Over half a million people had come to Europe in the first ten months of 2015, many fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East, South East Asia, and Africa. As the European Union debated its response to the influx in September, nation states at the edges of the E.U. enacted policies that bounced streams of people around bottlenecked borders.

Bolivia recently became the first—and only—country in the world to legalise child labour for children as young as ten, contravening international regulations in an attempt to find a local solution to a global phenomenon. The children in this story are amongst the 850,000 Bolivian child workers who are trying to reconcile their families' immediate economic needs and their own ambitions. Spurred on by success stories of former child workers who have enrolled themselves in university and started their own businesses, they are the heralds of a country striving to show the world an alternative path to development.

The capital of the Central African Republic is used to be home to more than 130,000 Muslims, integrated with the rest of the population. Since the outbreak of sectarian violence, the rest having fled amid a veritable pogrom.

A rebel group incorporated into the national army returned to insurrection in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo in April 2012. The rebellion lasted only 19 months, but wreaked terror across the region, killing hundreds and displacing hundreds of thousands.

It took a little over two years after the birth of the world's newest state for it to slip back into a bitter conflict which has ravaged the country, displacing over 2 million people and killing tens of thousands.

After 19 months fighting the Congolese government, M23 announced the end of their rebellion in November 2013. A military success for the government heralded in a new wave of optimism for eastern Congo, but the spectre of their dark past remains.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and the economic heart of the country, has history going back millennia, lying at the end of the Silk Road; it is one of the worlds oldest continually inhabited cities. But the Syrian revolution has brought death and destruction to its inhabitants since early 2012.

Farmers in Somalia say that they have not had rain for nearly two years. The whole region has been hit by a drought, the like of which has not been seen for 60 years. Four regions in Somalia have been declared as in a state famine. Thousands have fled their homes—and their decimated livelihoods—in Somalia, either seeking refuge in population centres such as Mogadishu, or crossing the border to Kenya and Ethiopia.

Fear loomed in the air during the run-up to Kenya's 2013 elections, fearing a replay of the violence that shocked the country—and the world—following the 2007 elections. But in 2013, the campaign for peace was successful.

Senegal's presidential run-off on March 25, 2012, was a model of democracy in Africa, despite protests criticising incumbent President Abdoulaye Wade of running for what his opponents deemed an "un-constitutional" third term.

The people of the Nuba mountains, long time victims of discrimination from Sudan's government, have been subjected to a campaign of aerial bombardment since June 2011 after fighting broke out between Khartoum and Nuba rebels.

The birth of the world's 193rd country. In January 2011, southern Sudanese voted in a referendum for secession from Khartoum. On July 9th, their wish was granted, drawing a line under years of civil war.